None of this was done on purpose. None of this, was, intentional. John Carpenter owned a small farm, too small for most vegetables to make profit, so he slaughtered livestock. Under these circumstances, someone could say, it was bound to happen eventually. But as it was said, none of this was done on purpose.
Carpenter was behind on his mortgage and he was feeling plagued by a real estate agency that wanted to acquire his land. The pig farmer didn't want to sell the farm because he wanted it to be in his family for years. He didn't inherit anything, nothing in his family was generational so he hoped to be the first to create a heirloom. He hoped that would be his farm.
But what if had to sell? Carpenter woke up in the middle of the night for weeks, with nightmares of living in an inner-city apartment and leaving his grandchildren with nothing but a box of photos. And he wasn't a good photographer.
Late one night, Carpenter awoke and couldn't get back to sleep, so he went out to the slaughterhouse and sat on a stool. The poor farmer gazed around the shed, the meat hooks, the carving knives, the special sickle they used to execute the animals. None of this meant anything?
Late in the month, as the old farmer advanced closer to his mortgage payment date, he came across a catalogue that boasted of special machinery. Carpenter flipped, bored, at all the specialty order mechanical bulls, auto-parts manufacturers and vending machines until he came upon a slaughterhouse assistance bot.
Carpenter could easily order this monster on a credit card and he'd slice up so much meat, he could sell thrice as much and make his payment on time.
So Carpenter ordered the machine. Six-to-eight weeks later, the mailman came up the drive and dropped off a six foot-by-eight package. Carpenter tipped the mailman, unwrapped the box and wheeled the machine into the slaughterhouse. It looked like a giant refrigerator, only with wheels on the bottom to help it move.
He didn't have any electricity in the shed, so he ran some extension cables from the house to the bot. Then he switched it on.
The refrigerator popped open and extended six bladed spider arms, each gleaming in the daylight. Carpenter, frightened for a bit, approached the machine again and pushed a few buttons on the front, to see what it would do.
He stepped back and the machine whirled and extended robotic fingers to Carpenter's outstretched right arm.
It quickly snatched and ripped the hand right off the bone and set it down. Carpenter, muted in agony, squealed and fell over, shooting currents of blood against the porcelain exterior of the machine.
Rolling in his fluids, Carpenter flipped over and grabbed his detached right hand. He immediately tried to shove it on the bone, sticking out from the wrist. It stuck on half-way and but got too thick and stringy to push on any further.
The machine quickly snatched Carpenter by the foot and spun him upside down, smacking his head against the floor.
Stunned, Carpenter wheeled about and then tried to free himself. A blade extended from the machine and sliced at Carpenter, detaching his left foot. He collapsed to the floor and his right hand skidded off. The old farmer flipped on his belly and reached for his lost limb, until the robot reached for him again. He lashed out and kicked away an arm with the stub of his left leg. On the other foot, he hobbled over to his second lost limb, snatched and rounded about again for the hand.
He held his foot in his mouth by the toes and tried to force his hand onto the bone again. This time, it was so deflated of blood that it wouldn't but flay around.
The robot advanced on its wheels, scattering puddles of blood. It extended another blade and sliced at Carpenter's good leg. It hacked halfway to the bone, but stopped. Carpenter slipped on it, cracking it off and sending his leg flying across the shed. Still clutching the hand and the foot in his mouth, Carpenter crawled on his single hand, pushing with the stubs of his legs in the blood and muck of the slaughterhouse floor, some of the blood of Carpenter, some of the blood of animals. He scrambled to the base of a huge trashbucket and pulled himself upright. The leg had landed inside the bucket, which had been used to store the skeletons of killed chickens and pigs.
Carpenter fished out his leg, shoved it into place under his calf and balanced on it. He bent down and shoved his foot underneath his ankle, meanwhile pressing his wrist into his hand against a wall.
At the moment that he had pieced himself back together, the robot advanced and decapitated Carpenter. His head fell, splat, into the bucket of pig skins.
